


Matriarchy

by Asteria



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 1000 words, Family History
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 04:30:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6408883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asteria/pseuds/Asteria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The birth of a trade empire, one generation at a time</p>
            </blockquote>





	Matriarchy

Maz Kanata’s foremother came to the place where the trails through the jungle met the river, and there she lit her first fire, and hung a pot from a metal tripod over the flames. She traded stew and skewers of blackened fish to the hunters and farmers and travelers who came by. They gave her meat and vegetables, which she added to her stewpot, or else they gave her pieces of jewelry or lengths of cloth or anything at all they happened to be carrying. If they had nothing to trade, she would accept a story as payment.

She built a hut with a leaf-thatch roof to live in, and to shelter those who came to her. She pounded a post into the riverbank so the fishermen could tie up their skiffs and come ashore to trade, or just to talk. The trails through the jungle became paths as more and more people used them. 

The paths became roads. She built a larger house with a wooden roof and many rooms, she built a dock where many boats could tie up, and she still cooked stew in the same pot. Travelers paid her in coins made of precious metals- gold and platinum and meteoric iron- but she still accepted a story in payment from those who had nothing else.

When the first man came demanding tribute from his master, the headman of a nearby town, she listened politely and refused to pay. The townsmen came with hunting weapons and farming implements, and no one is sure exactly what happened but when the dust settled the men had gone home and their leader’s banner hung from her wall.

She had a daughter. The parentage of the daughter was unclear but she loved her and raised her and taught her how to make stew, how to negotiate a fair trade, how to listen to all who passed through. Together, they built another house, made of stone with a courtyard and a kitchen garden and many floors. Flat-bottomed trading barges tied up at one dock, fishing skiffs at another, and other watercraft- courier ships from distant places, pleasure boats with carvings and draperies- at a third. They built a long, covered shed where beasts of burden could be cared for and sheltered from the rain.

She was coming to the end of her youth. The daughter hired people from nearby to cook for the travelers, to clean the rooms and care for the beasts of burden, to serve drinks. The daughter oversaw more and more of the daily business. The mother listened to the stories and collected the banners of the men who tried to force tribute from her.

The daughter, in turn, had a daughter, and she built a landing strip for atmo-ships, which brought people and goods from the far side of the world. She built a larger house, with a high-ceilinged hall, and hung the banners her mother collected from the beams. She styled herself “mistress.”

When the mother died, the land and the river and the air mourned her passing with a rainy season wetter than any before or since. Her daughter and granddaughter buried her beneath the house, with her stewpot and her metal tripod. The funeral feast went on for days as friends and business partners came to pay their respects.

The first ship from beyond the sky landed in that place, and the mistress and her daughter were the ones to greet these visitors from another world. They had no common language and shouted incomprehensible syllables at each other as they shared stew and fish and exotic liqueurs. The mistress enlarged the landing strip, and her daughter began to learn new languages.

New trade brought even more travelers. The house with the high-ceilinged hall became a citadel, and buying and selling and trading of all kinds took place in its vast interior, as well as in its dark back rooms and hidden catacombs. The mistress never failed to take her payment.

The mistress’ body was found floating under the river docks without a mark on her to say how she died. Her daughter, still young, made a great show of grief, and some whispered that she had killed her mother- an unforgiveable sin in the eyes of the local gods- to take the citadel for herself. No one dared accuse her directly, lest they be found floating in the river themselves, and the rumors ensured that the new mistress went unchallenged for a very long time.

When the men came to take the new mistress’ young daughter, she laughed scornfully and sent them away. The gods-given power in their blood was not for outsiders and aliens to turn into a weapon. It held the small empire of the citadel together, bound to the foremother’s bones and her tripod and stewpot, deep in the ground, and to the land and the river and the air. We will come back, said the men, and we will take her and teach her and she will be among her own kind. You will not take her, said the new mistress, for I will not let you, I who have killed before, and will kill again if I must. The men left, and did not come back.

The gods carried out their vengeance in the new mistress, and she died in great pain and fear, calling out to the shades of her foremothers. Her daughter watched and tended her, and buried her with all due ceremony in the catacombs of the citadel.

Travelers from all the worlds came to the citadel, to trade, to gossip, to eat and drink and gamble and wait for opportunity to look their way. Maz Kanata erected a statue on the site where her foremother kindled her first fire and served stew from a pot now lost beneath mud and foundation stones. Most travelers now bring money or goods to trade, but from those who bring nothing else of value, a story is still payment enough.


End file.
